Admit it, Demon's Souls was more fun to play than Dark Souls

After playing Dark Souls for months since I got it on my birthday (October 17th), I feel an amazing sense of nostalgia when returning to Demon's Souls. The absolute beauty they put into each area, the old movesets for all of the old weapons, the peaceful song that plays in the Nexus that just automatically makes you feel safe. I prefer Demon's Souls because of nostalgia.

I'd really like some clarification on that statement.. lost the core?

Demons souls is just like dark souls, only primitive and less well executed (I'm being jokingly harsh here, on a whole the games are both of similar quality, with dark coming out on top without significant doubt)

Anyways, I prefer Dark. Why? The bosses are more challenging on a whole, and there's more of them. Poise adds a whole extra element to the gameplay, as does cast limits. There's no tendency (is was more awkward than interesting imo.. repeatedly jumping off a bridge to change or keep tendency where i wanted it isn't what i call 'fun'). Also there's way more weapons, armours and an extra magic type to throw into the mix.

I guess the only thing i could say demons was more fun in is that you could just gather so much grass and spice you could run like a maniac round levels spamming anything you felt like with little or no skill involved whatsoever or threat of dying, though that's kinda detracting from what souls is rooted in.

Oh, and farming.

Serious_Much wrote:I'd really like some clarification on that statement.. lost the core?

Demons souls is just like dark souls, only primitive and less well executed (I'm being jokingly harsh here, on a whole the games are both of similar quality, with dark coming out on top without significant doubt)

Anyways, I prefer Dark. Why? The bosses are more challenging on a whole, and there's more of them. Poise adds a whole extra element to the gameplay, as does cast limits. There's no tendency (is was more awkward than interesting imo.. repeatedly jumping off a bridge to change or keep tendency where i wanted it isn't what i call 'fun'). Also there's way more weapons, armours and an extra magic type to throw into the mix.

I guess the only thing i could say demons was more fun in is that you could just gather so much grass and spice you could run like a maniac round levels spamming anything you felt like with little or no skill involved whatsoever or threat of dying, though that's kinda detracting from what souls is rooted in.

Oh, and farming.

You speak only of gameplay mechanics though. What Demon's Souls has, and what makes it a more enjoyable experience to me than Dark Souls (and what I believe is at least part of this supposed "core" mentioned in the OP) is that the world is more immersive. Atmosphere in the levels is stronger and the lore is much more tightly woven. From a roleplaying perspective Boletaria drew me in much more than Lordran. Boletaria was a world I simply wanted to spend more time in, regardless of what I was actually doing, where Lordran I always had to have some excuse such as a new build idea or challenge run to make me want to come back.

Taken strictly on their own merits as individual games I enjoyed Demon's Souls more, because though the gameplay itself may not be quite as refined, I found it was a project with more heart and spirit that I was able to connect with and get lost in. Dark Souls is fun to play, but Demon's Souls is an experience.

Both are experiences though....? Seriously, how's that even an argument

Anyways onto the actual serious debate; I agree with you, the atmosphere is better. Is atmosphere part of fun? That's pretty uh, grey, leaning more towards the black of no. Is it fun to watch a carefully thought out atmospheric fantasy adventure film like Final Fantasy XIII? No but it does have atmosphere! (I think you get where I'm coming from) I don't really consider atmosphere to have any effect on the 'fun', things can be very fun without atmosphere, running round killing things is in itself fun, a random story and gloomy world doesn't really add anything to the activity in the fun department.. More in the balls scariness (latria :| ) than anything..

I don't really get what effect many of the things you have to say about demons have on fun. Fun is not based on heart and spirit, or atmosphere really. Fun is it's own entity that is separate. One of the many reasons why beat em up games sell- they have virtually no heart or soul (you're beating the **** out of people lol), and they're not particularly engaging either.. It's just really fun to hit things, and that is that.

In my opinion (though it's pretty reductivist of the concept of fun) is that more fun stuff to do = more fun game..

Serious_Much wrote:Both are experiences though....? Seriously, how's that even an argument

Anyways onto the actual serious debate; I agree with you, the atmosphere is better. Is atmosphere part of fun? That's pretty uh, grey, leaning more towards the black of no. Is it fun to watch a carefully thought out atmospheric fantasy adventure film like Final Fantasy XIII? No but it does have atmosphere! (I think you get where I'm coming from) I don't really consider atmosphere to have any effect on the 'fun', things can be very fun without atmosphere, running round killing things is in itself fun, a random story and gloomy world doesn't really add anything to the activity in the fun department.. More in the balls scariness (latria :| ) than anything..

I don't really get what effect many of the things you have to say about demons have on fun. Fun is not based on heart and spirit, or atmosphere really. Fun is it's own entity that is separate. One of the many reasons why beat em up games sell- they have virtually no heart or soul (you're beating the **** out of people lol), and they're not particularly engaging either.. It's just really fun to hit things, and that is that.

In my opinion (though it's pretty reductivist of the concept of fun) is that more fun stuff to do = more fun game..

YOU DARE SAY SUCH WORDS!??!! RAAARRRGGHHGAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!! -Meat Cleaver-

I'm not sure I get what you're saying here. You're saying Dark Souls lost the core of what made Demon's Souls popular, and yet Dark Souls is much more popular than Demon's ever was.

Onto which is better/more fun, I honestly think nearly everyone who played both games will be partial to whichever one they played first. I played Dark Souls before Demon's and I enjoy it much more.

Dubscythe wrote:
Onto which is better/more fun, I honestly think nearly everyone who played both games will be partial to whichever one they played first. I played Dark Souls before Demon's and I enjoy it much more.

Thats probably also a good pointer

Demon's Souls has faster combat, which I liked. Weapon movesets were IMO better for PvP. PvE-wise, though, Dark Souls's enemy and level design is on a whole level above DeS's, though. The game is much more challenging and it feels more like they moved focus away from mastery of combat and more towards thinking your way through encounters, which is the direction that the Souls games like to go in.

Saturday-Saint wrote: feels more like they moved focus away from mastery of combat and more towards thinking your way through encounters, which is the direction that the Souls games like to go in.

I actually felt like Demon's souls did this much more, as most enemies and bosses had specific weaknesses or ways to beat them, whereas with dark souls pretty much everyone can be beaten by the same kind of tactics without effort (I mean even seath can be beaten by magic, which is a jokes)

Demons bosses had specific quirks that caused them to need a specific response to win. However dark's bosses were mostly the large, slow types, demons had a lot of varied bosses in their too, and all much more unique in their own right than dark. The obvious exception was penetrator. I felt he was just in the game to make it longer, he was actually pretty boring.

I only chose Demon's because in Dark you have to practically beat the game in order to unlock any good items. For instance: To unlock the crystal sorceries, you have to:
1. Obtain the Lordvessel
2. If you want to be a Darkwraith, go kill the Four Kings
3. Complete Duke's Archives

In order to unlock advanced sorceries in Demon's you have to:
1. Beat 3-1

Simple as that.
Another reason I chose it is because the levels are A LOT longer. Sure, the bosses are pushovers, but the levels are so amazingly long, and if you die once, you have to start all over. In Dark Souls we have a Bonfire System. Let's look at the two Blight Towns.

Dark: You go down a ladder, kill a few enemies, make a jump for a Katana, rest at the first bonfire. Continue along, kill one "thing", 2 fire dogs. Down a ladder, continue. Down another ladder. From here you can safely jump off platforms to the bottom. You move over, another bonfire. Then you just make your way to the boss. With a +5 weapon, you'd use about 5 Estus in total if you know what you're doing.

Demon's: You start off going straight, but you have to take a sharp right. It's easy to think the path keeps going and you might fall off. Now you have to hug the wall in hopes you don't fall off. You fight a few guys one the way down. Now you're in the swamp. You get poisoned every 5 seconds, so you're better off just leaving it alone. You have these slime things that attack you and, of course, poison you. Continuing along, you find a Meat Cleaver BP. Of course, it can magically run through the swamp, and that Meat Cleaver will hit through your shield, and, let's face it, normally 1-shots or 2-shots most players. Now you can continue along. If you go to the left, you can pick up the Great Sword of Moonlight. The you continue. You finally reach some land only to learn that it's just a few patches. Go across these until you reach a scaffold. Make your way to the top, fighting of the Depraved Ones and Mosquitoes, and jump down. Now you're in a scaffold area. You have to make your way through a bunch of rigged areas to the boss gate. Now you fight a pretty annoying boss if you have no way of dealing fire damage. Once he's done, continue along and be ready to fight Garl Vinland. If you ACTUALLY fight him, he can 1-shot you with a parry, if you do a hit and run strategy, he'll backstab. You kind of have to guess and test with him. Now comes the plague. If you don't have some Dark Moon Grass, you better skip the dialogue, or you will die before Astrea does. Congratulations, you just completed the Blight Town of Demon's, you can only rest after each boss.

Obviously, comparing these two, Demon's is the harder game. This can be said for almost all areas. (ESPECIALLY BOLETARIA VS. UNDEAD BURG).

I prefer Dark Souls a lot over Demon's, but playing through Demon's there were aspects of it I liked better. I sort of see a combination of the both to making the perfect Souls game for me. Weapon animations from Demon's, the stronger story and world of Dark, Poise from Dark, enemies with specific weaknesses being common in Demon's, the list goes on. I really like both games when you get down to the meat and potatoes.

I'd have to go with Dark though if I had to choose once since I consider it a better game. Story and what not, that's very subjective. Both have solid stories from an objective view in how they are structured. Personally I enjoy the story of Dark a lot more but I'll just say that's subjective on my part. However the gameplay of Dark I find to be more fleshed out and a bit better designed overall. Being that it is a video game and not a book or movie, I have to go with Dark Souls.

Tolvo wrote:I prefer Dark Souls a lot over Demon's, but playing through Demon's there were aspects of it I liked better. I sort of see a combination of the both to making the perfect Souls game for me. Weapon animations from Demon's, the stronger story and world of Dark, Poise from Dark, enemies with specific weaknesses being common in Demon's, the list goes on. I really like both games when you get down to the meat and potatoes.

I'd have to go with Dark though if I had to choose once since I consider it a better game. Story and what not, that's very subjective. Both have solid stories from an objective view in how they are structured. Personally I enjoy the story of Dark a lot more but I'll just say that's subjective on my part. However the gameplay of Dark I find to be more fleshed out and a bit better designed overall. Being that it is a video game and not a book or movie, I have to go with Dark Souls.

This.

I love how dib's post neglected the fact that by the point you take on that level you can have 198 items that heal your health fully without trying, let alone if you're playing soul form so half and above basically fully heals you.

The healing items broke demons souls for me. Having like 30 half moon grass walking into any boss fight for an experienced player ill say (I'm pretty good, but not amazing) was basically giving me a free license to do whatever the hell i wanted because the bosses are a joke :|

The levels were hard yeah, but with 198 grasses, I could kill every enemy in the whole world, having to use a grass after every enemy i killed and still have enough to beat the bosses down, with trololololol playing in the background.

As for the magic thing, I'm glad you can't unlock the best stuff until the end.. that also broke the game. On demons, you could have your best equipment before you'd even cleared 2 worlds. In my experience, on NG any good player with a +7 or above equivalent weapon will be able to ease through the game, but it is just too easy to get, too early on! But for the magic it's even worse... you get spice, you get a great magic attack (soul ray) ridiculously early on.. and you ca spam your way through the game. Just like the healing, it's outrageous, and totally unbalanced.

Anyway i dunno why we're talking about this, the threads about fun, not which is more difficult :|

Serious_Much wrote:I love how dib's post neglected the fact that by the point you take on that level you can have 198 items that heal your health fully without trying, let alone if you're playing soul form so half and above basically fully heals you.

The healing items broke demons souls for me. Having like 30 half moon grass walking into any boss fight for an experienced player ill say (I'm pretty good, but not amazing) was basically giving me a free license to do whatever the hell i wanted because the bosses are a joke :|

The levels were hard yeah, but with 198 grasses, I could kill every enemy in the whole world, having to use a grass after every enemy i killed and still have enough to beat the bosses down, with trololololol playing in the background.

As for the magic thing, I'm glad you can't unlock the best stuff until the end.. that also broke the game. On demons, you could have your best equipment before you'd even cleared 2 worlds. In my experience, on NG any good player with a +7 or above equivalent weapon will be able to ease through the game, but it is just too easy to get, too early on! But for the magic it's even worse... you get spice, you get a great magic attack (soul ray) ridiculously early on.. and you ca spam your way through the game. Just like the healing, it's outrageous, and totally unbalanced.

Anyway i dunno why we're talking about this, the threads about fun, not which is more difficult :|

The poison halved your grass' effects.
It may be unbalanced, but in order to really get the damage done, you need sorcery boosts, (AT LEAST one, Old Monk's Headpiece, Ring of Magical Sharpness, Kris Blade), and that makes you open to attack by a HUGE amount. You were balancing it out, more damage for less defense.
Yes, you can get your best gear early on, but for the most part, you have to complete most of the worlds to complete it. (say I want a Faith build that wears Dark Silver armor, I need to do 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 4-1, 4-2, 5-1, 5-2, 5-3).

If I were to discuss difficulty I think I would view it like this.

Demon's is consistently difficult. The whole game is about the same level of diffuclty, mostly.

Dark has more of a curve to it. It starts off easier than Demon's, but if you ask me is more difficult by the end of it.

Which one is more difficult over all I don't think people will agree on, it'll just be which you played first. I do think though they go about difficulty a bit different in ways.

Also Serious, that really pissed me off. It got to the point where basically I didn't allow myself to use spice or grass on my first run through of the game. No regenerate either, so I could challenge myself when playing. Otherwise I'd just be walking around with a beer hat stuffed full of grass.

Serious_Much wrote:Both are experiences though....? Seriously, how's that even an argument

Anyways onto the actual serious debate; I agree with you, the atmosphere is better. Is atmosphere part of fun? That's pretty uh, grey, leaning more towards the black of no. Is it fun to watch a carefully thought out atmospheric fantasy adventure film like Final Fantasy XIII? No but it does have atmosphere! (I think you get where I'm coming from) I don't really consider atmosphere to have any effect on the 'fun', things can be very fun without atmosphere, running round killing things is in itself fun, a random story and gloomy world doesn't really add anything to the activity in the fun department.. More in the balls scariness (latria :| ) than anything..

I don't really get what effect many of the things you have to say about demons have on fun. Fun is not based on heart and spirit, or atmosphere really. Fun is it's own entity that is separate. One of the many reasons why beat em up games sell- they have virtually no heart or soul (you're beating the **** out of people lol), and they're not particularly engaging either.. It's just really fun to hit things, and that is that.

In my opinion (though it's pretty reductivist of the concept of fun) is that more fun stuff to do = more fun game..

I very much disagree. Fun is not standalone in my mind. The atmosphere is a big part of the fun, and a good atmosphere can single handedly drive a game forward and into my list of favorites (survival horror is good at this, as rarely do they excell at anything other than atmosphere.)

Some games, like halo, can get to feeling like a chore to play. Its fun, but my skill plateaued long ago, so I play just to keep from getting rusty. I enjoy it, but its work. Demons souls, as reaper said, pulls me back just because the world is so well done, and it doesn't much matter what I'm doing in it so long as I'm there. Fallout games are like that for me too. I'll do whatever happens to sound good at the moment, rather than needing a reason in the vein of challenge runs.

Forum Pirate wrote:

Serious_Much wrote:Both are experiences though....? Seriously, how's that even an argument

Anyways onto the actual serious debate; I agree with you, the atmosphere is better. Is atmosphere part of fun? That's pretty uh, grey, leaning more towards the black of no. Is it fun to watch a carefully thought out atmospheric fantasy adventure film like Final Fantasy XIII? No but it does have atmosphere! (I think you get where I'm coming from) I don't really consider atmosphere to have any effect on the 'fun', things can be very fun without atmosphere, running round killing things is in itself fun, a random story and gloomy world doesn't really add anything to the activity in the fun department.. More in the balls scariness (latria :| ) than anything..

I don't really get what effect many of the things you have to say about demons have on fun. Fun is not based on heart and spirit, or atmosphere really. Fun is it's own entity that is separate. One of the many reasons why beat em up games sell- they have virtually no heart or soul (you're beating the **** out of people lol), and they're not particularly engaging either.. It's just really fun to hit things, and that is that.

In my opinion (though it's pretty reductivist of the concept of fun) is that more fun stuff to do = more fun game..

I very much disagree. Fun is not standalone in my mind. The atmosphere is a big part of the fun, and a good atmosphere can single handedly drive a game forward and into my list of favorites (survival horror is good at this, as rarely do they excell at anything other than atmosphere.)

Some games, like halo, can get to feeling like a chore to play. Its fun, but my skill plateaued long ago, so I play just to keep from getting rusty. I enjoy it, but its work. Demons souls, as reaper said, pulls me back just because the world is so well done, and it doesn't much matter what I'm doing in it so long as I'm there. Fallout games are like that for me too. I'll do whatever happens to sound good at the moment, rather than needing a reason in the vein of challenge runs.

Going through 3-1 again...
Seeing how horrifying it is
How... scary it is
How well made it is
The sounds
The blood
You can almost taste the fear

Am I the only one who wasn't unnerved by the Latria zones?
At the same time, I realize that I was unnerved only slightly by even the Valley of Defilement-actually, I really enjoyed it from a setting standpoint. (from a gaming standpoint when my skill was only that high, world 5-2 brought up my frustrations more than any other point in the game. Mud, poison, high-poise giants who could 2-shot me... I wasn't as skilled as I am now) I recognize that my preference is to have the setting be as dark and twisted as possible, and nothing even in Demons Souls matches settings I've made.

I was first introduced into Demons Souls a week or two into January a year or two ago. I had a lot of money saved up and went to gamestop to buy a PS3. I also got three games with, only one of which I had even heard of before-Elder Scrolls: Oblivion- (I had played it on a PC at a friend's house) and Prototype and Demons Souls. I have for a long time liked the 'human bioweapon' trope, so that was the appeal of Prototype for me. On the back cover, Demons Souls spoke of its deep customizability in the story (which I think is inaccurate) and that was something that I had been looking for in a video game for years and had never found, it had apparently won a 'Game of the Year' award, and the screenshots looked awesome.
I had well before that started studying history on my own-mainly European history in the Midieval Ages, Renaissance and Early Modern Period, and I had grown very unsatisfied with the appalling lack of realism in any fantasy setting, (more than I thought a fantasy setting should, anyways) especially combat.
And then I went from playing Zelda and Oblivion to Demons Souls. At first, I thought the game was just [url=a cheating b@$trd]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard[/url]. I drew up my anger and frustration so much that I soon quit and went back to Prototype and Oblivion. And after a while, I picked it back up. I eventually gave up on a 'blind playthrough' (something I hadn't done in years) and used the wiki. I slowly learned how to play it, and eventually realized that in terms of what I wanted in realistic, brutal, low-hp video game combat, it was actually exactly what I had been looking for. And then there was the story.
I really love stories; its what first drew me into fantasy in the first place. Because of this, I also really love the worlds. I especially love very dark settings, because it adds more depth and requires a greater (or at least more dramatic) rising of the hero(es). When I play a video game, I always want to go and explore the wilderness, interact with the inhabitants of the cities in an everyday manner (with a fantasy twist) and go collecting and crafting. The story and atmosphere is inherently part of the appeal and fun of any story and game-a piece, not the whole. When I looked out into the mountains and looked at the enormous city below from the Boletarian Palace, I wanted to go down in there and interact with that part of the world. I didn't feel this nearly as strongly with Dark Souls. Between the two games, I think Demon's Souls had a much deeper, emotionally-stirring setting, and Dark Souls performed a much better job at allowing the player to interact with that setting. (considering that only Dark Souls was an open world setting, that's to be expected, though)
Like Tolvo, there are major aspects that I prefer in each game that was not present in the either. Demons Souls had a more emotional story and setting, longer stages, mana (I prefer mana to limited casts; I just think the refueling was done very badly) mostly better aesthetics than Dark Souls, and it was very human; I was able to relate to it very well. Dark Souls has poise, a much broader collection of equipment, awesome, stylish kingdoms and characters, and it gave a true triumph for the 'dark' ending (whereas choosing the dark ending in Demons Souls blatantly led to one's own destruction-though, if that character were euthanizing the world like Allant, that works) and a better sense of accomplishment at the end-even if you think that both endings are actually a loss. (as I do)

To be honest I think 'fun' is the wrong word to use in connection with the Souls games. I would replace it with 'interesting' but that's just me shouting my mouth off as usual.
Strangely enough I have just started playing Demon's Souls again and what struck me immediately is how much 'purer' a game experience it is. Pure in the sense that it hasn't been mucked about with as much by trolls, hackers and gankers like Dark Souls has and, apart from that glitch with the blacksmith in the Nexus which incidentally I didn't take advantage of, relatively cheat free. Of course there will now be a spate of replies telling me about this or that way of cheating, ways I have missed so I may well be barking up the wrong tree here. The fact is I dont know as much about the ins and outs of Demons Souls because I never joined the wiki, so, for instance I don't know if there was such a thing as 'player trade' and stuff like that.
I remember thinking and in fact posting on the forum when I heard Dark Souls was going multi format that it would, in my opinion, open the floodgates to all sorts of shennanigens. I think I was right in that assumption, although other people may think differently.